A couple of years ago on a family plane trip, one of our checked bags was overweight, so we took something out and put it in a carry-on. I took my daughter, then 13, to point out that there was something really silly about the exercise, since that couple of pounds of “removed” stuff would still be weighing down the same plane. Extrapolating, we have an air travel system that gets its undies in a bundle about an extra few pounds of luggage, but doesn’t care if you weigh 90 pounds or 250, as long as you fit in one seat. No solutions here, but worth pondering.

Air tickets should always have been priced like that. “one cent per pound per minute in the air” or whatever. Why should I have ever been subsidizing people who bring three suitcases per person on board a plane? If you take half those suitcases out, there will be more room for air freight, which would lower my net ticket cost.

How many other services charge a fixed cost, even though their variable costs are known in advance? Does UPS charge the same for heavy boxes as for light ones? Do lawn services charge everyone the same, regardless of how big the lawn is?

I always thought the weight limit for checked luggage was for when the airline employee had to move the bag (say off the luggage mover onto the motorized ramp up into the airplane). This would prevent them from having to move 100 lb bags all day and the added cost was to discourage this but still allow it if it was a needed service.

A thing to ponder for people proposing selling airfare by the pound: Most of air tickets are booked online and offsite. You can think about having a fixed cost and a variable cost payable while receiving the boarding pass. This can create a lot of extraneous delays, transactions etc. If you try simplification, it eventually boils down to fines for overweight luggage as in the current system.

Tickets are seldom bought at the departure counter, and you would not want them always to be sold there on a variable scale. Imagine if you had to wait for everyone and everything to be weighed, items to be shifted around, sent back home (while the person who brought you to the airport waits double-parked outside), etc.

Fat people are not a small minority and discriminating against them would not be a good idea in terms of public relations.